April 22, 2009

The Dunreith Accident (MP3s)

On January 1, 1968 two trains collided in Dunreith, Indiana about 40 miles east of Indianapolis. In the aftermath of the wreck, local singer Shady Stevens whipped up a tune called The Dunreith Accident

The result of a broken rail, the wreck derailed 26 cars and caused a hydrogen cyanide spill. Another car, carrying anhydrous ammonia, exploded resulting in flames shooting 100 feet into the air. The fire spread to a trackside cannery and a nearby liquid fertilizer storage tank, which exploded blowing up hundreds of cans of tomatoes which looked like blood spots on nearby patches of snow. Along with the cannery, seven local houses were destroyed by the explosion, but amazingly there were no deaths.

Porter Wagoner fans will recognize The Dunreith Accident, as the music was lifted directly from Porter's 1968 hit The Carroll County Accident, which has also been included here for the sake of a convenient reference.

At least Stevens was decent enough to acknowledge Bob Ferguson's authorship of the song. Ferguson, an RCA producer who was responsible for overseeing many of Porter Wagoner's finest records, wrote the song after noticing the sign for Carroll County, Tennessee while speeding from Nashville down to Mississippi. After investigating, he learned that there were 13 Carroll Counties in the USA and figured that the county name would work well for the song he crafted.

Incidentally, Indiana does have a Carroll County but it's approximately 100 miles northwest of Dunreith, which is in Henry County.

Comments

The March 7, 1969 edition of Time had this to say about the crash:

At Dunreith, Ind., 250 residents had to be evacuated for 48 hours after two freight trains sideswiped, releasing flammable and poisonous liquids that resulted in a ten-hour fire and a huge explosion. The fire destroyed a cannery—Dunreith's major industry—and seven houses; cyanide pollution of the water persisted for several months. The wreck, which cost the railroad $ 1,000,000, was caused by a defective rail that would have cost $50 to repair.

Carroll County, Kentucky was the site of the 1988 bus crash involving a church bus returning home which was hit by a habitual drunk driver. Porter's song sounds like an eerie prediction of the events twenty years in his future of that night on I-71.